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Amy Douglas raised £2,198 from 84 supporters
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Closed 01/03/2020
Weʼve raised £2,198 to transfer an archive of reel-to-reel tapes of Scottish Traveller, Duncan Williamson, before they degrade and are lost
- Bishops Castle, UK
- Funded on Sunday, 1st March 2020
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Story
I have 150-200 hours of reel-to-reel recordings of Duncan Williamson. Duncan was a Scottish Traveller, storyteller and singer with an immense wealth of traditional stories, ballads and riddles. He was my mentor and a huge inspiration to storytellers throughout the world.
The tapes were recorded during the 1970s and 80s by Duncan's wife, Linda, as they worked on publishing collections of his stories (most are published by Canongate - have a google). Duncan's books are wonderful, but hearing the story brings a whole new dimension to the experience. There is other material included that has not been published in any format - ballads, jokes, riddles, stories and snippets, discussions on the nature of story with visiting storytellers, writers and musicians... and I suspect much more, though until they are digitised I have no way of discovering exactly what the tapes contain.
The tapes are currently in climate controlled storage, but their quality is deteriorating. They need to be digitised as soon as possible to retain this important resource.
I am applying for an Arts Council Bid to digitise, edit, catalogue and listen to the tapes. The bid will give me the opportunity to work with the material and explore different ways of sharing Duncan's legacy - learning and telling the stories alongside memories of Duncan himself; singing the ballads; creating an online database - we'll see how it develops!
For the application I need to prove matched funding. Some of that will be from me - materials and time. But the more people donate here will help raise money and also demonstrate that people are interested in saving Duncan's legacy, hearing where working with those stories takes me and being part of a conversation about how and where traditional stories fit into our modern world
I'd like to ask people to donate £15 - the cost of a CD. When I have enough tape transferred, cleaned up and edited my aim is to send you a code to download the equivalent of an album of Duncan's material.
Updates
12
3 years ago
Amy Douglas
3 years agoThank you everybody for you fantastic support. The tapes are digitised, safely in the School of Scottish Studies Archive and the crowdfunding album is finally finished! However, I set this crowdfunding page up at the start of my journey and picked the wrong site! JustGiving only allows one message to each funder - I've saved it to send the link to the Dropbox to you all - but the message is not working! I've done my best to find everyone, but I don't have contacts for lots of you - please reach out to me and I can send you the album!
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3 years ago
Amy Douglas
3 years agoHurrah! At last the long promised album is ready! You should receive a message from the JustGiving site with a link to Dropbox so that you can download it. If you don't receive this, then please check your spam or there will have been a technical hitch. The issue with JustGiving is that I only get one message to you all! So if you don't receive a link, please message me on Facebook or email me on amydouglasstoryteller@hotmail,.com and I will make sure you get the link. I hope you enjoy it x
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4 years ago
Amy Douglas
4 years agoWork on the album for all you lovely crowdfunders is underway! I have the list of tracks, now for a little bit of editing and cleaning up. In the meantime, I've been talking to Linda Williamson, Duncan's wife about what to put on the album and she has been putting up some of the stories on her Facebook to give you a flavour - so find Linda on Facebook - or I've been sharing her posts on my Facebook page too. Also don't forget Taking The Tradition On every Tuesday at 8pm - here's my conversation with Linda Williamson
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Amy Douglas started crowdfunding
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Supporters
84
Cath Edwards
Jan 5, 2020
It's taken me a while Amy, but here it is at last. Good luck!
£50.00
Sharon Carr
Aug 27, 2019
A belated donation, Amy. Here's to your work! x
£15.00
Catherine FitzGerald
Jun 10, 2019
Good for you. Can't wait. Noa and I have been reading Duncan's books. So sad none of them could meet him - I only got to once. But I have a photo of him as a bookmark as we read.
£15.00
David Phelps
Jun 7, 2019
£10.00
Mette Jorgensen
Jun 6, 2019
What a wonderful and important project.
£20.00
Anonymous
Jun 6, 2019
Keep at it wonderwoman! X S
Peter Parker
Jun 6, 2019
Good luck
£10.00
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Amy Douglas
Bishops Castle, UK
I love stories and I am a professional storyteller. Apprenticed to the late Scottish Traveller, Duncan Williamson, I hold in trust many of his stories and ballads, alongside some terrible jokes which by ancient tradition can only be shared after ceremonial intake of much whisky!